So pleased to have my poem “I lost summer somewhere” featured in Centered Magazine this month. The poem was previously published in Poetry Breakfast.
Category: poetry
Migrating Geese
Keening in a bruised sky,
ragged chevrons
follow the coastline south –
imperfect V’s, left wanting
on one side or the other –
testament, perhaps, to those taken
by foxes, hunger, double barrels,
their skeins unraveling autumn.
– Sarah Russell
First published in The Houseboat
Republished in Poems in the Waiting Room
September
Black-eyed Susans gossip in the gullies
between the road and corn
past harvest,
clouds in feather boas waltz
through pale silk skies, and cows head home
for milking, while
the hawk holds vigil on a fence post.
– Sarah Russell
First published in The Houseboat
Republished in Your Daily Poem
The Cottage
“the smell of earth turned by a trowel…”
I’ve grown quiet here. My mind
has opened to woodsong
and the smell of earth turned
by a trowel.
I enjoy solitude, even when regrets
or the throb of an old lover happen by.
Sometimes I invite them in, make
a ritual of teacups on starched linen,
a silver server for the scones.
We reminisce ’til shadows trace
across the floor, call them away.
Afterwards, I tidy up, wipe away
drops spilled in the pouring. I save
the leftovers though they’re getting stale.
I may crumble them on the porch rail
tomorrow for sparrows
before I garden.
– Sarah Russell
First published in Poetry Breakfast
Dorothy’s Grave
“They haven’t dug the grave yet.”
Mom insisted on coming to the cemetery
after her best friend Dorothy’s viewing.
“The funeral’s not ’til 2 tomorrow,” I said.
“They’ll dig it in the morning.”
“They should have it dug,” she fussed.
Mom is a farm woman, used to death.
She turned ninety in the fall,
and Dorothy was her last good friend
in the tiny delta town where children leave
for jobs or school or just to escape the soy
and cotton. Her church has only twenty members
now — old women who show off corsages
on Mother’s Day and sometimes cajole their men
to come in overalls and slicked-back hair.
Dorothy and Mom taught Bible study, went to Eastern Star
and bingo, traded recipes and gossip.
Mom killed a rabid skunk in Dorothy’s yard
with the double barrel she keeps under the bed,
and Dorothy came to quilt on Wednesdays –
just the two of them since the other three passed on.
“Why’s it important to see the empty grave?” I asked.
“I need to know she’ll be comfortable,” Mom said.
“I know she’d do the same for me.”
– Sarah Russell
First published in On the Veranda
At the beauty salon
I close my eyes as a young woman
massages in shampoo, gently rubs
my temples, smooths cream rinse —
scented with jasmine — from my brow,
and you are here with me again
that summer day under the waterfall.
– Sarah Russell
First published in Shot Glass Journal
Petrichor
Start with a kiln-dry summer day,
when the earth cracks with longing,
and sweat makes tracks between your breasts.
The air’s so still you hear a beetle scuttle
on the screen, the sun dims in a sullen sky,
and crickets stop chirping. Maybe they know
what’s coming, or they’re tired of asking.
Then it starts – the first lazy drops –
and when the wooden porch step’s dappled,
you go out and lift your face to the embrace
and breathe in the mix of dust and rain
like a lover’s musk.
– Sarah Russell
First published in The Houseboat
Nesting
The finches are courting
outside our window, a warbled
discussion of real estate and love.
Like last year and the year before,
they want to lease the flower wreath
on our front door. It’s always a dilemma:
discourage their rapture or detour
through the garage?
The finches always win. So
for a month we’ll wake to overtures
at dawn – so cheerful, so loud –
show pictures of pin-feathered babies
to friends, recall demands
and pleasures of our own brood,
the bittersweet fledging.
– Sarah Russell
First published by Your Daily Poem
The photo is of their nest last year.
Thought this was apropos since Mr. and Mrs. Finch are back and are quite excited about our new wreath this year. They were both tucked into a niche behind the blossoms, discussing the furnishings when I opened the door this morning. The nest was almost complete this afternoon. Can’t deny true love.
Hegira
Those dream-filled summer nights,
a wail, anguished as a banshee,
pierced the rusty screen.
Then the rhythmic clatter grew
until the bed and I would tremble.
Let me come too, I whispered,
but it never heard,
or didn’t understand,
or didn’t care about a little girl
and a gallant torn-eared bear.
The rumbling, shaking wraith
moved on, its cry waning to an echo,
my heartbeat clinging to the cadence
of away from here, away from
here, away
– Sarah Russell
First published in Black Poppy Review
Montana Man
“. . .the sky’s wide and blue and bare. . .”
Another ekphrastic poem today, based on a photograph by Tom Klassy.
He squints from under a John Deere cap
even when there is no sun. It’s late fall now,
the hay — enough this year — baled
for January feeding if the pickup makes it
to the herd — huddled, wooly, steamy breath
to match his own, pitch fork separating clouds
of gold, strewing it like loaves and fishes —
that kind of pride, though pride’s a wobbly perch
when drought and blight’s the norm, when the pickup
needs a fuel pump, barn needs shingles.
But this morning, the sky’s wide and blue
and bare, and Waylon’s singing Ramblin’ Man
while he hums along. Bernice’ll have coffee
scalding hot at the cafe, and prices were up
on the farm report this morning. Folks and steers
ain’t so different, he reckons, herd gathering,
keeping with their kind.
– Sarah Russell
First published in Ekphrastic Review
